Section 5.2: Climate Dynamics and Landscape Evolution

Theme of the Virtual Institute for Integrated Climate and Landscape Evolution Analyses ICLEA is the better understanding of the Dynamics of Climate and Landscape Evolution of Cultural Landscapes in the Northern Central European Lowlands since the Last Ice Age.

Within the framework of the research project PALEX (Paleoclimate in the Eastern Mediterranean Region – Levante: Paleohydrology and Extreme Flood Events) sedimentologists, hydrologists and geochemists from Germany, Israel and Palestine are carrying out joint research. Model scenarios for the Dead Sea region predict increasing drought with progressing global warming. This would affect millions of people living in this region.

The aim of the BMBF project PalMod is a transient simulation of global climatic changes for the complete last Glacial-Interglacial cycle, i.e. the last 130.000 years. Palaeoclimate data from different proxy archives will be used for validating the modelling results. Within the PalMod work package WP 3.2, which is coordinated by GFZ Section 5.2, existing high-resolution palaeoclimate datasets will be compiled, synchronized and evaluated with regard to climate sensitivity and chronological uncertainties.

An exceptional discovery of 256 individual pine trees within the town of Zürich in 2013 (referred to as the BINZ material), for which first radiocarbon dates now suggest a time window roughly between 14 000 and 11 000 BP, implies strong evidence to fill existing gaps in the Late Glacial tree-ring chronology around 12 500 BP.

The overall projective of CAHOL is the reconstruction of the Holocene climate, with special focus on tipping points, from continental and marine archives to better understand the driving mechanisms of abrupt climate changes and the interaction between the monsoon and west wind climates. CAHOL is part of the BMBF research program CAME II: “Crossing climatic tipping points – consequences for Central Asia“.

In the PALESCA project, local actors in close cooperation with scientific and governmental institutions assess critical environmental changes and develop approaches to solving problems at two focus sites in Kyrgyzstan.

PAPACORA-200 - Paleoclimate, Paleomagnetism, and Cosmogenic Radionuclides of the past 200,000 years

High-resolution sedimentary records from several locations over the globe that cover up to four glacial-interglacial cycles are being studied for their paleoclimatic properties as well as for their paleomagnetic information.

Within the frame of the international geoscientific graduate school for geosciences StRATEGy (IGK2018; funding by German Science Foundation DFG und the state of Brandenburg) we investigate two lake sediment profiles of the Yala lake group in NW Argentina together with our partners from Jujuy University.

Long-term temperature reconstructions derived from trees growing well within their latitudinal or altitudinal limits in European lowlands are missing, which is a crucial gap in the palaeoclimate database. Therefore, the aim of the project is to establish and advance cell structure measurements as a new proxy for temperature reconstructions in the temperate lowlands of Northeastern Germany and Northern Poland.

Africa is very likely to warm more than global average during this century. Especially (semi-)arid regions are endangered to experience particularly high warming and possibly catastrophic droughts. The prediction of the climate change impact on these regions requires information about the past climate conditions in high temporal and spatial resolution. There is a massive lack of transregional highly time resolved climate proxy data for the African continent.

Central Asia, extending between the Caucasus and the eastern Tibetan Plateau, with a semiarid/arid belt with water shortage to the west and a glaciered mountainous area with very unstable surface conditions to the east, holds a key position for understanding geodynamic and climate processes.

The Helmholtz Climate Initiative REKLIM (Regionale Klimaänderungen/Regional climate change) is a consortium of eight research centres within the Helmholtz Association. For an improved estimation of future climate change researchers need information on time duration, rate, frequency and regional patterns of long and short term climate fluctuations. A review into the earth's history forms the basis of understanding climate reaction and dynamics in comparison with changes in external forcing and internal feedback processes.

The TERENO Northeastern German Lowland Observatory (TERENO-Northeast) is one of four German observatories assessing the effects of global change at a regional level. TERENO-Northeast combines extensive field monitoring of recent processes with geoarchive data, particularly from lake sediments and tree rings, to find answers to the effects of global change, one of the key challenges of the 21st century.